Among this web-book’s four examples of collective
dwelling-places Edelweis represents an extreme. Apart from the expressive
individualism of their fittings, its living-spaces are basically similar: all of identically
bivalent function: studio/dwelling; all (with the exception of Henk’s
foyer/stair) in dimensionally similar containing spaces, espousing almost identical basic
layouts: large full height studios on their north sides, multi-level apts on the
sunny water-facing south.

When
the Edelweis squatters formed a 'stichting' (company) which in 1991 bought the
building and divided it into similar studio/living-space portions the working purpose of the original artists’ squat continued
in the assignment of at least half their volume to studio use. This is especially visible in the ‘row-of-5’ whose containing spaces are of
hanger-like simplicity and similarity, and whose relatively flimsy apt constructions: light
steel-supported platforms, thin or transparent screen-walls, and sparse
furnishings (all constrained by cost), fail to obscure their huge and simple
containers. Indeed it always seems as if the studio, in each case a large and
undifferentiated portion of the volume, is continuous with the shell/building
itself - giving a strong impression that the apts are intrusions in its space. It is as
if, in an apotheosis of its simple household functions, the common studio-habits
of making coffee and scratch meals, working late and sleeping-over, had
gratuitously expanded into elaborate dwelling-structures.

During its
squatted stage
Henk and
Leonie were the only Edelweis artist-squatters to
live in the building. Henk
was unique in using the site only for a home - he had a studio
elsewhere until the building was divided in 1991. Leonie was unique in both
living and working there. When its main central space (the erstwhile
restaurant) was divided into studio portions with board partitions [PIC: p1] they
made living-spaces in the building's east and west ends: first Leonie
in its east-end theatre stage and rooms, then Henk in
the west-end entrance-foyer/stair. When in 1991 the studio portion of the building was
divided into 5 similar living-spaces, each with its
own entry stair, Henk retained the now functionally redundant foyer/stair
and developed it as his separate 'private-house', while Leonie moved from
her complex of theatre-rooms into one of the new simple spaces of the
‘row of 5’.

Leonie's second living-space, and those of
Godelieve, Charlotte, Liesje [Ref: p3] exemplify the
‘row of 5’ (I regret never visiting Gerard's apt at the centre of the row). Constructed in identical 19.5 x 8.5 x ht: 6m
spaces they constitute a kind of individuality-test! The monumental cubic
simplicity of these ‘containers’, with their straight solid sides and glass
ends, dominate (in memory) the complex
individualistic structures within them; even the large mezzanines that span
the spaces give an impression of independence reminiscent of aircraft in a
hanger.

Because
they represent a process of development through both stages of the site's
occupation - as squatters then as legal owners - Henk's and Leonie's
spaces are shown first:

HENK
LIVING-SPACE
(ver 1: 1983 to 91 / ver 2: 1991-)
His version 1 apt in the building’s foyer is unique in site and
history: the only living-space occupied by the same person before and after the
1991 division
- when both the use of its site and its form as a living-space were radically
transformed. Both stages are shown here: its first squat-period version [PICs:
1990]; and its second post-division version [PICs: 1994].

LEONIE
LIVING-SPACE
1 (8-12-82 to 91) /
LIVING-SPACE 2 (1991-)
Both Leonie's apts are shown here: her first squat-period theatre-space [PICs:
1990]; and her second post-division living-space, which is shown in
two states of completion: during its first post-construction fitting-out stage [PICs: Jan
1992] and increasingly
domestically established and sophisticated [PICs: Aug 1993 and 1994].

EDELWEIS:
LIVING-SPACES (S-FACADE)

(DR 1994+2006 / info as at 8-1995 / to N)

[This
diagram is an approximation derived from on-site drawings.]

The
main part of the building is raised 5.4m off the ground on 42 I-beam
pillars. The height of the raised portion is approx 6m to the roof
centre and 4.5m at the facades.

EDELWEIS: LIVING-SPACES (LEVEL
1 PLAN)

(DR
1994+2006 / info as at 8-1995 / top is N)

[These
diagrams are approximations derived from on-site drawings.]

The
interior dimensions of the 5 centre apts (my 'row of 5') are approx 8.6m x
19.5m / between the wall-embedded columns = 13.3m / a diagonal between the
columns = 16m.

Edelweis’
entrance-foyer and ‘grand’ stair to its restaurant level are housed in a
rectangular brick-clad glass-fronted extension at the west end, which emerges as
if extruded from the elevated main body of the building. During the 8½ years of
the squatting period (up to the 1991 dividing) it was the normal entrance to the
upper-level studios. From late 1982 it was also the unlikely venue of an evolving
living-space: its first version symbiotic on the foyer’s forms and use, the
second post-1991 version reconstructed as an independent studio/apt that filled
the whole volume of its newly sealed site.

Among
the Edelweis living-spaces Henk’s is unique. It is the only space
to maintain a continuity of occupant and site since early in the squat-period
(the two other early apts changed occupiers), and it inhabits a unique site: the
only space based on the ground, in a visibly distinct portion of the building,
internally encumbered (unlike the other empty spaces) with massive forms.

It
began in late 1982 when Henk and Leonie left their shared ‘encampment’
in the restaurant’s kitchen and established living-places, she in the east-end
theatre facilities, he into tiled chambers under the foyer’s huge stair.

In
1984 Henk extended his troglodytic apt into the unused volume of the foyer -
dynamically articulating the great wedge of space above the stair with an ‘aerial’
construction, a triangular glass-walled bedroom platform supported on RSJ’s
welded to the facade stanchions and buried in the concrete wall. A decisive
insertion of a formal counterpoint to the stair’s ponderous symmetry, and of
an irrelated function (the private-domestic) into the stair’s dull pompous
dilation of a simple need. This first version of the living-space was a tour de
force of adaptive ingenuity and structural resourcefulness, it reconciled the
contradictory requirements of open access and domestic privacy in a way that
formally dramatised their sharing of the space - emphasised their exclusiveness
yet facilitated experiential exchange, subtly syncopating their confrontation
and overlap.
It also
hardly touched the host building, requiring welds to four facade stanchions
and a tiny cavity cut in the stair's south wall.

EDELWEIS
SQUAT - W-END
(pic
9-90 / to EEN)

The
glazed entry-front of the dockworkers' restaurant/theatre. In the space of
its glazed foyer and over and under its 'grand' stair Henk made his extraordinary apt.

A
marvellous adaptation to and of an unusually awkward site - a living-place
both aerial and troglodytic: utilising the triangular volume behind the
glass entry front; squeezed in the narrow high vestibule, lapping the
slope of the wide stair and filling the cavernous rooms beneath it - its
potential for dynamic architecture and domestic utility affirmed by an
audacious structural addition: a triangular glass-walled bedroom supported
asymmetrically over the huge diagonal of the stair, approached up tiny
steps and handholds jutting from the tiled cliffs of walls.

HENK
(VER 1):
WALL-STEPS TO BEDROOM
(pic
2-9-90 / to NNW)

HENK
(VER 1): WALL-STEPS FROM THE BEDROOM
(pic
2-9-90 / to SE)

HENK (VER 1):
BEDROOM ENTRY
FROM INTERIOR
(pic
2-9-90 / to S)

HENK (VER 1):
BEDROOM INTERIOR
TO ENTRY
(pic
2-9-90 / to SSE)

.

HENK
LIVING-SPACE (VER 2: 1991-- - STICHTING (COMPANY))

On
the purchase of the building by the artists' Stichting in 1991 and its division into
independent living-spaces, the foyer-stair became functionally redundant and
Henk reconstructed his apt to fill its whole
volume, including a studio whose floor spans between the side-walls of the
stair (and destroyed the ‘hovering’ bedroom) - thus in spite of its physical
differences it now exhibits the same studio/domestic duality as all the Edelweis
living-spaces.

Compared
to the first apt’s original fiat the new version is conventional and
confusing. Now isolated inside its own building - without the dramatic clash of
functions to motivate design innovation - the enormous forms of its obsolete
access-role at worst simply impede the space, at best provide structural
support. Building around, over, and within these intrusions has resulted in a
labyrinthine interior:

Starting
at a new entry door cut in the rear wall, a two-branched 'burrow' wraps the
volume of the great stair. One route opens into the cave-like living-rooms
beneath it, climbs and skirts a narrow platformed sleeping-space in the tiled
gap outside the stair’s inner wall, twists around this wall’s prow (where
the ‘flying-bedroom’s’ steps once jutted) and - after this long sequence
of enclosures, climbs, dog-legs and constrictions - walks out into a space like
a ballroom: the magnificent volume of the new studio; at whose rear the
foyer-stair’s upper flight emerges from beneath the new floor and mounts to a
wide terrace (the entry landing of the former restaurant), from where, over a
balustrade of glowing light-boxes, one surveys this new space to its outer
limit: the huge glass screen-wall of the old facade. The second route,
right-angled to the first, skirts the under-stair cave-room’s outer walls:
first along the building’s rear, fringed with narrow kitchen, shower and wc;
then along its side, a thin and empty passage to what was the front foyer - now
a lost fragment beneath the new studio floor, fringing the pavement behind a
sealed glass facade.

The
new formation has left awkward spaces difficult of access and of as yet
undefined usefulness - it will almost certainly continue to evolve.

The former restaurant/theatre entrance foyer, its 'grand' stair, and
under-stair caretaker's spaces is now Henk's almost-'detached house'. Henk's new studio
now claims the vast W-facade window while
its floor now slices this cubic volume in two. Apart from a bed-platform,
domestic functions are now mainly at ground-level: behind the
street-entry doors in the now redundant foyer; under the huge stair (that
still diagonally bisects it), and in the passageway around the stair's perimeter.

HENK
(VER 2): EXTERIOR SW CORNER - S-FACADE
(pic
9-94 / to NNW)

Except
for narrow spaces along the 'outside' of the support walls of the 'great-stair' - the
huge studio occupies the whole upper level and
a sitting-room and child's
room the understair 'caves'.

The narrow S-side space is lit by 6 windows, the 3 upper (new 'copies' of the
originals below) light the access-stair landing and
a sleeping platform; the 3 lower light a
hallway entered through a new 'front-door'.

Across
the E-side a passage (lit by a row of windows and
housing Henk's kitchen)
passes behind the rear support-wall of the 'great-stair' and
continues along the N side
into the old front foyer.

The
foyer - once a dramatic ‘exchange-space’ between Edelweis’ access
and Henk’s apt - is now this washing-hung cul-de-sac; the terminal leg
of a long perimeter passage from the new rear door. The new studio floor
has sliced the grand entry and reduced the old foyer to a residual wedge,
bizarrely walled with glass and half a stair.

A
display of theatrical grandeur that is an almost
inevitable by-product of constructional choices imposed by the building. The
new floor’s three supporting RSJ’s are welded to the facade stanchions and rest on the great stair’s mid-way landing [ref: Henk's squat-apt pic].

HENK
(VER 2): STUDIO
(pic
9-94 / to E)

The studio's mezzanine is the old foyer-stair's
top landing, extended forward over
the remnant of stair that emerges through the new studio floor.

HENK
(VER 2): STUDIO - THE FRONT OF ITS E-END MEZZANINE - EMERGENCE OF THE OLD FOYER-STAIR !
(pic
9-94 / to EES)

The
old foyer-stair emerges through the new studio floor - the new mezzanine
projects over it providing 'stepped-storage'; only a small portion still
serves as stair.

EDELWEIS
FROM E-END - THEATRE WITH GROUND-LEVEL ENTRY & THE GLAZED FACADE OF
THE 'ROW OF 5'.
(pic
9-94 / to WWS)

Leonie's liv-space 1 (the first in Edelweis)
utilised this E-end 3-windowed
theatre portion, whose stage faced down the length of the restaurant and whose back-stage rooms have
external access through their glazed porch.

Leonie's 2nd living-space is immediately
adjacent to the stage, at the E-end of the glass-walled 'row of 5'.

LEONIE
1: BEDROOM ON THEATRE STAGE
(pic
9-90 / to NNW)

Leonie made the theatre stage and rooms into her first living-space in
late 1982. She
glazed the proscenium and styled the raised stage as her 'theatrical'
bedroom - looking out into a space that, after the 1991 dividing, would be
walled off from the stage and become her living-space2.

The approx. 3x7m window is cheap 2nd-hand glass set in her own wood
frame.

Leonie's
second living-space, begun in 1991, was first recorded in Jan 1992 when the recently
divided space had already acquired at least the most basic forms of its main interior structures:
entry-door, bed-mezzanine, stove placements, service pipes; but its walls were
unrendered, most of its domestic fittings were either temporary improvisations
(the shower!), or in inconclusive positions of need relative to a changing
environment whose most important provision was the facilitation of its own
change/completion.

Leonie said she values calm - the atmosphere of her
apt is "calm space". She dislikes the floor's tile pattern - it's
"unquiet" ... that 'the pattern of the whole 60m long floor worked - a
single huge design - but not in sections'.

This extraordinary 'exhibiton' of dynamic forms whose
complex interacting sometimes affords startling spatial conjunctions (eg: the
view from the diagonal mezzanine) was made by someone who claims that as a
"designer of space my talent is zero" - 'always 2D only, due to
astigmatism from birth'.

All the storage-units, table, desk are made from her recycled
art-works and Edelweis glass.

LEONIE 2: LIVING-SPACE ENTRY
(pic
9-94 / to EES)

Initially
the stair up from the Plein served the living-space via a triangular
door-faced 'porch' [ref: Jan 1992 phase above]. This simple entry-box 'grew' an elaborate structure that includes a shower/wc-cell that reciprocates
its triangular formation [ref: below].

Skirting
the counterweighted door, a 'stair' of 'shelves' surmounts the glazed 'roof' of the shower/wc-cell,
extending width as it ascends to touch the receding diagonal of the
mezzanine. Leonie calls this stair her "Whoopqie in the Why of Nowhere".

LEONIE 2: LIVING-SPACE ENTRY-DOOR (OPEN)
(pic
9-94 / to N)

The inclined entry-door's
counter-weight is strung from
the door's handle, and via the truss above, hangs beside a mezzanine support tube, in visual counterpoint
with the silver portions of the stove's dismantled chimney and
the
copse of metal verticals beyond.

LEONIE 2: DOMESTIC AREA FROM STUDIO NW CORNER
(pic
9-94 / to SSE)

LEONIE 2: DOMESTIC AREA FROM
CENTRE
(pic
9-94 / to SSE)

LEONIE 2: DOMESTIC AREA - SOUTH
WINDOW

FACADE
(pic
10-93 / to SSE)

LEONIE 2: DOMESTIC AREA - TABLE
(pic
9-94 / to SW)

This
table is made from recycled art-work (supports)
and an Edelweis window element (top).

LEONIE 2: DOMESTIC AREA TO STUDIO
(pic
9-94 / to NE)

[Note
the next picture, taken 11 months before, and
compare both these
with the apt's state in Jan-92 above].

The
big 3m high storage-units are made of Leonie's paintings.

LEONIE 2: DOMESTIC AREA TO STUDIO
(pic
10-93 / to NE)

LEONIE 2: DOMESTIC AREA - FROM
SIT SPACE TO KITCHEN
(pic
9-94 / to N)

Looking
from the couch [ref: pic above] across the counter and
kitchen-space
to the bath-wc/apt-entry structure beyond.

LEONIE 2: APT ENTRY &
SHOWER/WC-CELL LIT
(pic
9-94 / to EES)

LEONIE 2: SHOWER/WC-CELL INTERIOR - WC
(pic
9-94 / to NW)

LEONIE 2: INSIDE SHOWER/WC-CELL - BASIN & SHOWER
(pic
9-94 / to NE)

LEONIE 2: SHOWER/WC-CELL - LAMP (ON)
(pic
9-94 / to NW)

A
tangled and wire clipped length of weather-proof cabled-lamps,
bought for a woodland painting project, is hung in this reflective tiled
cell.

LEONIE 2:
SHOWER/WC-CELL - LAMP (OFF)
(pic
9-94 / to NW)

LEONIE 2: DOMESTIC AREA VIEW UP TO MEZZANINE
(pic
9-94 / to NNE)

The mezzanine bed-platform is the wooden theatre stage that was the site of Leonie's first Edelweis bedroom [ref:
above], supported on eight 3.9m steel
tubes welded to steel strapping. Its plan is a truncated right-angle triangle which bridges the apt's 19.5m width; 6.8m wide along its west side, 2.5m along its east.
Its statics was checked by an experienced person.